


more terrible monsters than sleep

by buckybun



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Depressed Steve Rogers, Depression, Dissociation, Hurt Steve Rogers, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insecure Steve Rogers, M/M, Panic Attacks, Protective Tony Stark, References to Depression, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Steve Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Angst, Steve Rogers Feels, Suicidal Thoughts, Tony Stark Has A Heart, and onward, ignores events of uhhh winter soldier, steeb is very very sad, tony is a good boyfriend
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-01-06 04:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18380960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybun/pseuds/buckybun
Summary: "You can't possibly love me. I have blood on my hands.""Darling, the only blood on your hands is your own."orSteve might be struggling. Tony is a good boyfriend.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> please heed the tags!! steve struggles a lot with his guilt and copes with it in an unhealthy and unsafe manner. i'm here for you if you're struggling and need an understanding ear!
> 
> *apologies to all the people wondering where the rest of this chapter was! i was writing really early in the morning and had nowhere to save it— i didn’t expect so many people to see this! thank you for your support and patience!!

Maybe Steve wasn't settling in as well as he thought he was.

Perhaps he'd settled  _too_ well the first couple of weeks out of the ice, as if his brain had been on pause as it waited for the punchline-- ha! All of your friends are actually still alive!-- but in the weeks following the Battle of New York, he could feel a strange numbness settling into his body, like the ice he'd been frozen in had replaced his bones.

The dossiers on the Howlies and Peggy were burning a hole on his bedside cabinet, in the back of his brain. Steve knew what they said, word for word. The red ink of the DECEASED stamp on the pages was searing into the back of his eyelids.

One moment he was driving a plane into the white expanse of the Arctic, certain that he was going to die, and the next, he was being unfrozen 70 years into the future, and everyone and everything he ever knew was gone.

 

Somehow, he opened his eyes in the shower, with no memory of how he had gotten there. His clothes were soaked through with the near-boiling water, and he was sitting down, facing the wall. Sluggishly, he fought the heaviness of his body to push himself to his feet, swaying and catching himself on the shower wall as the feeling rushed back into his legs. 

His head felt floaty, buzzing in his ears as he opened the glass door. His vision wavered as he looked at his (too large) hands on the shiny nickel-plated handle. Everything in the future was shiny now, shiny and gleaming and polished and unreal, like a dream.

(Perhaps he was still dreaming, he hoped.) Reality in the new century felt like wisps in his fingers, catching smoke in the flickering lights of the screens installed in every room of the tower, in the S.H.E.I.L.D. headquarters, the helicarrier, everywhere he looked. His bulky body (it felt like a week ago that he was still trapped in that too-small skin, with hollow bird bones and fists that never seemed to hit hard enough. Nowadays, he felt like a bull in a china shop, delicate glass screens cracking if he wasn't paying attention. Tony had patented a super-strength immune screen protector specifically for him for the days he forgot his strength.)

Steve suddenly felt a long way away from the floor. His chest felt hollow, like there should've been something between his failing lungs and his ribcage. But. But his lungs weren't failing. 

_It's hard to breathe._

He got dressed with shaking hands and left the tower for his morning run.

 

 

Steve knew it was going to be a bad day before he even opened his eyes. The covers around him felt coarse to his enhanced skin, which prickled more than usual--like he was running a fever. The hypersensitivity didn't stop there, extending to the throbbing headache behind his ears and leading into his neck. 

He allowed himself five seconds before straightening resolutely, fighting back a faint wave of nausea as he got dressed for the day. 

His arms felt sluggish and heavy, like his muscles had turned to deadweight. He managed to pull on his shirt before he burst into tears.

Sitting heavily back down, he scrubbed roughly at his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose and willing himself to stop. 

_Captain America doesn't cry._

By the time he made it downstairs to breakfast, there was no evidence anything had happened at all.

 

Aside from Steve's mandatory training sessions, the Avengers rarely saw each other in Tony's behemoth of a tower. Natasha and Clint departed on SHIELD side missions without warning, Thor had been off-world for two months, and Bruce and Tony likely spent all of their spare time down in the labs. The empty halls of the Tower seemed grey and artificial, from the LED lights to the cutting edge technology that operated everything seamlessly in the background.

Steve sometimes wondered if he was real.

 

He was the Avengers gym's most frequent resident. Tony and Bruce had their labs, Natasha and Clint had... whatever they did in their spare time, and Steve had his gym. The reinforced punching bag had lead him through many nights that felt like they would never end and long days when he felt like his grasp on reality felt like it was slipping away.

Steve didn't resist the urge to pound his knuckles as raw as he felt inside. 

To the rest of the world, World War II was a century past, a chapter in the pages of history textbooks, a reminder of how evil humanity was back then. There were perhaps a handful of people still alive and sane who knew what it was like to liberate a camp full of living ghosts, fewer who knew what it was like to look Red Skull in his horrible, sunken face, and only him to recall crashing a plane into the Arctic Ocean and waking up a lifetime later.

More often than not, Steve felt like a pumpkin with its insides scraped out and an empty smile carved into his face.

 

(He finds himself wishing he could dig his fingers under the edge of his scalp and peel, peel away all the flesh and muscle until only tiny Steven Rogers remained.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is set at an indeterminable point in time between a1 and aou to prevent uh timeline conflict

Tony interacts... uniquely with the people around him, Steve notices. He rarely called anyone by their actual names, rarely looked them in the eye when he spoke to them, rarely said anything meaningful outright. 

He is a brilliant man, Steve can concede, though he spends so much time skirting around and diverting all attention away from the fact that sometimes it makes one wonder  _ what _ exactly he is a genius at.

He supposes it doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't affect the way the team works together, but the Howling Commandos didn't just  _ work together. _ They were a single unit, would trust one another with their lives without a moment of hesitation. (Steve's heart panged somewhere in his huge empty chest and he stamped it out.) The only members of the team who he felt might fit that description were Clint and Natasha, and he doubted either of them would be inclined to trust any of the other Avengers with anything more than backup.

It gave Steve a headache to even  _ think _ about helping the Avengers do the same, but he was never one to back down from a challenge.

So. Teambuilding.

 

Food was usually a good place to start if he wanted to earn someone's trust. Heaving himself to his feet, he allowed himself to let the weight of his body settle over him like a blanket before shuffling to the bathroom to wash up.

Thanks to Tony's tech, the shower was already at the right temperature when he stepped in-- scalding. Cold water was absolutely out of the question, and he'd tried to shower with warm water exactly once. Steve doesn't remember much, just that he came back to himself surrounded by the shattered glass of the shower door, convinced that he was drenched in human blood.

He kept his eyes fixed on the soap dispenser in the corner as he showered, trying not to think about the fact that he would have been eye-level with it pre-serum, trying not to think about how the muscles of his enhanced body illogically felt like they were pulling off his bones under their own weight, trying not to think. Steve felt like he was falling apart.

Habitually, his showers lasted under eight minutes. By the time he stepped out, the skin on his upper back had stopped stinging.

Even with the extra flush in his cheeks as he stepped up to the quickly un-fogging mirror, there were dark shadows under his eyes. For a jarring moment, he saw his small self's face overlaid onto his new one. Pointedly, he brushed his teeth facing the opposite wall. 

 

The kitchen in the common floor of the Tower was vast, the likes of which even the rich folks from his time couldn't even  _ dream _ of. All the handles winked polished nickel, the countertops were white marble, swirled with silver.

The pantry and refrigerator were both walk-in, like a grocery store. (Steve doesn't belong here.) He picked out the ingredients to make pancakes and eggs the way he'd seen them in diners back when they had a little money to spare.

With JARVIS' help, he soon had five stacks of pancakes before him on the counter. At the request of the AI, the team began to trickle into the kitchen. Except Tony.

Even JARVIS sounded resigned as he informed Steve that “Sir cannot be persuaded to leave his work at this moment.” Taking a deep breath and scooping up the extra plate, Steve stepped into the elevator.

 

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a review! i love reading what people think of what i write!  
> constructive criticism, prompts, suggestions are definitely welcome too!


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